CLASSIC TECHNIQUES
You’ve enamelled the frame, built and polished that 100-point restoration motor, now gleaming on the bench, and just collected the paintwork. But that tatty old seat? It’s clearly going to let the side down. Something has to be done.
Seats don’t receive much in the way of preventative or restorative maintenance in their hard lives. They get squashed, bungee’d with goods various, left out in the rain, occasionally protected by a ripped-open Tesco bag or similar. Only the lucky few received a faux-leopard skin stretch cover for inclement days. Most of the other cycle parts on old clunkers are resistant to rust, maybe due to the film of lubricant spread uniformly over them, but seat bases are victims to the water-retaining properties of the foam and slowly rust away, out of sight.
My BSA 441 seat looked superficially OK and felt quite comfy, but when I removed the faded cover it was a
